


Real Magic

by satin_doll



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, F/M, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Rated T for two slightly naughty words, eventual Sherlolly, pre-sherlolly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:38:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satin_doll/pseuds/satin_doll
Summary: Sherlock and Molly encounter real magic.





	Real Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaybeItsJustMyType](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaybeItsJustMyType/gifts).



> I don't have any idea where in the timeline this is supposed to take place. I suppose it could be just about anywhere. You can decide for yourself. 
> 
> For Kiki, because she was magical.

Sherlock had decided long long ago that London was full of magic. 

He could feel it padding along with him at night as he wandered the streets, weaving in and out between his feet as he walked. Even in daylight he could glimpse it from the corner of his eye, glinting from windows or dancing along the tops of buildings. Sometimes it was dark and menacing, lurking in shadows in alleys or darkened doorways, murmuring in the fog. Sometimes it was spritely and mischievous, laughing at him in the sunlight or whispering in the rain.

But it was always there, somewhere.

No one would ever have suspected such fanciful thoughts to be tangled in the cold hard web of logic in the mind of Sherlock Holmes. He hid it well; but then a great many things were hidden in his mind - and in his heart.

*****

The little house was empty. He knew Molly would be late - she was almost invariably late - so he let himself in with the key he’d had made, and entered the code into the alarm system. Molly believed he picked her locks; perhaps she thought he needed to practice and that he chose her locks because they were particularly difficult. He’d never disabused her of that idea, though it really didn’t make much sense. She’d refused to give him a key, so he’d made one on the sly. It was almost annoyingly easy to do. 

There was something about exploring her house when she wasn’t there that made him feel...proprietary. It was as if, at least in his own mind, he had special rights as a sort of caretaker of her property when she wasn’t around. He wandered through the rooms, checking that everything was where it was supposed to be, touching objects with a finger, sniffing the air - like a cat on patrol. He could tell immediately if anything had been moved, could spot any tiny changes she had made: a new book on a shelf, a new perfume she was trying out, a new feeding dish for Toby. 

He went through every room, even the bathroom, and when he was satisfied that all was as it should be, he settled himself on the sofa and clicked on the television to wait for Molly.

That was when he heard the scratching. 

It was a slight noise, barely audible over the sounds from the television, but it was most definitely _there_. There where it didn’t belong. 

Sherlock glanced down at Toby, curled up beside him on the sofa. The cat was asleep, not even twitching a whisker in a dream. He clicked the telly off with the remote, sat very still and listened. 

There it was again. The faintest tiny _scritching_ noise, like a twig against another piece of wood. 

He closed his eyes and turned his head, trying to determine the direction from which it came, as it sounded a third, then a fourth time. 

It seemed to be coming from the rear of the house. There was a short hallway off the lounge that led to a back door, much like the short hallway in 221B that led to his bedroom from the kitchen. Sherlock had always ignored this hallway (since the only thing ever in it was the occasional bag of trash to be taken outside, which was _definitely_ not his area) and, apart from a cursory glance when he’d first visited here, he had never really looked into the small bit of land behind the building.

Now, his curiosity piqued by the odd little noise, he wondered why he had never taken the time to explore in back of the house. Molly had told him there were motion detection lights in the rear, and, after Moriarty’s infamous broadcast, the house had been wired with more high-tech security and alarms than even Mycroft kept. Sherlock was the only one who could possibly have disarmed the security system. He was fairly certain that whatever was making the scratching noise was quite small. He was also more than certain that Molly did not have a problem with rats or mice or any other pests besides himself.

He stood in the hallway - noting, with the barest twinge of relief, that it was completely empty of bags of trash - and listened. Faintly, the noise came yet again, along with an equally faint but very definite high-pitched, breathy squeak. 

But it didn’t sound like an animal. As he cocked his head, closed his eyes and listened, he could have sworn it said a word. In a voice. A very small, very soft voice - but clearly a voice. 

Sherlock was at the outer door in an instant. He undid the several locks in a flash and yanked it open to - nothing. There was no one there. No small animal rooting near the ground, no lost child seeking help, certainly no adult sized figures playing tricks. 

He stepped over the threshold into a surprise. 

In back of the house was a garden. A small garden, to be sure, but a garden nonetheless. It was surrounded by a neat, high brick wall, and was laid out in a series of small circles, each circle containing not flowers, but a variety of green plants in various stages of growth. Each circle was surrounded by small gray stones, and in the center of each circle was a tiny statue. A narrow gravel path wound among the circles, and led to a tall wrought iron gate centered in the back wall. 

Did Molly do all this? Sherlock blinked, and his mouth dropped open in utter surprise. How could he not have known this was here? The scratching and the barely-there voice were pushed to the side of his mind as he stepped out onto the gravel path.

*****

Molly was in a dither. She was late, which was not unusual in itself, but she was supposed to meet Sherlock at her house, and being late for _that_ could lead to all sorts of complications. She had no doubt that he had already picked the lock and let himself in. She also knew that he would peek into every nook and cranny. 

His explorations ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem. She had long since given up hope of maintaining any semblance of privacy where Sherlock was concerned, at least privacy of a physical nature. Though he could deduce her emotionally in the blink of an eye, she had learned that he couldn’t always tell what she was _thinking_. She had become expert in schooling her expressions and movements, much of which she had learned from _him_. Her thoughts, for the time being, were still her own. 

And she had all sorts of thoughts that he couldn’t explore. There was quite a lot that he didn’t know about her. She had become very adept at hiding those thoughts - and the activities that went with them - from Mr. Nosy Holmes. 

Today, however...this day had conspired against her. She had overslept this morning, beginning a chain of rushed events that had followed her throughout the day. Around mid-day, she realised, to her horror, that she had forgotten something - something important. It came to her in the middle of an autopsy, and she couldn’t very well apologise to Mr. Weldon’s heart, which she was holding in her hand, and dash home to take care of it. Then came Greg Lestrade, with questions about Mr. Weldon (and various other silly things) and she had forgotten again, and THEN had come another body, one half hour before her shift was over. 

And there was Sherlock, who had asked her to be available for dinner (“Nothing special, we can have take away at your place…”), who said he would meet her there at half seven and who she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was already there and...and...she had forgotten that one very important task…

She scrambled to ensure that the next shift took over the last corpse, and could only hope that everything hadn’t exploded into chaos before she got home. 

*****

Sherlock was, for perhaps the second time in his life, at a loss for words. As he stepped around each little circle of plants, he grew more and more baffled. A few of the plants he recognised: feverfew, comfrey, peppermint and the like, herbs that were common for medicinal or culinary purposes. Others he didn’t recognise, and there were a number of those. All were neatly grouped in the circles, well spaced, well tended, and healthy looking. 

But then there were the little statues. They were not like any decorative figurines that he had ever seen. 

They seemed to be of strange little creatures, mixtures of human and... _other_. Not animals, but bizarre fantasy beings. Each was perhaps thirty centimetres high. Each was depicted in an odd twisted position, almost as if it was dancing. 

By the time he reached the gate at the end of the path, his heart was beating rapidly and he was thoroughly perplexed. As he gazed back at the mysterious circles, the air seemed to be filled with a musical buzzing and in his head an image formed of a chorus of tiny bees hovering over the plants. He had a difficult enough time picturing Molly planting and maintaining this strange little garden, but where on earth had the tiny statues come from and why were they here? 

What bothered him most was that he hadn’t been aware of any of this. He _knew_ Molly, through and through - or so he’d thought. The idea that perhaps he hadn’t known her as well as he’d imagined was simply…outrageous. Not possible. Completely absurd.

As he stood there, scanning Molly’s impossible secret garden yet again, the barest of movements under one of the plants caught his eye. There was no breeze that he could feel; the brick wall surrounding the garden would block all but a decent wind. 

He focused on that spot and waited.

There. The slightest twitch of a leaf on one of the plants in the very centre. Maybe a mouse or a small rabbit was investigating? He watched for a few seconds more.

And just as he was preparing to steal back to that spot as quietly as possible, he felt...he could _swear_ he felt...a tug on his trouser leg.

He glanced down, and, of course, there was nothing there, no twigs or plants that could snag on a trouser leg. But he had felt it. He _had_ felt it. A definite tug, as if two miniature fingers had grasped his trouser leg and... 

Sherlock took a deep breath, rolled his eyes, and started back down the gravel path to Molly’s back door. 

Molly would be here any minute. He’d get to the bottom of this.

He glanced up at the door, and saw Molly standing there. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she was not smiling. 

She did not look happy to see him. 

*****

Sherlock stopped in front of Molly and tried a tentative smile. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was peering past him, at something behind him and to his left. He began to turn, but Molly reached out and grasped the sleeve of his coat. 

“I think...you had best come in.” She tugged, not-so-gently, on his coat sleeve, all the while staring steadily past him. “Now, Sherlock. Right now.”

Molly backed into the doorway, pulling Sherlock along with her. Sherlock’s mouth hung open on the question he had been about to ask. As he stepped across the threshold with her, however, he frowned. 

Molly was more than her usual upset with him. In fact, she seemed a bit worried. Maybe even a little frightened. She pulled him all the way in, then swiftly closed the door and locked it. Still tugging him along by the sleeve, she marched them through the short hallway and closed the inner door. 

“Molly…” Sherlock’s impatience was clear in that single word.

“In a minute, Sherlock,” Molly tossed over her shoulder as she turned and hurried to the kitchen. 

Sherlock huffed an exasperated breath and rolled his eyes. This was silly. He took a step toward the kitchen just as Molly reappeared carrying a large shallow bowl in her hand, filled with what looked like milk or cream with some sort of dark lump in the center of if. 

“Wait here,” she ordered and whisked past him to open the door to the hallway again. She hurried to the outer door and quickly undid the locks with one hand, balancing the bowl in the other. She then stepped outside and pulled the door closed again. 

Sherlock was beside himself with curiosity and impatience. From the look of things, she was feeding something in the garden. Surely she wasn’t using the milk on the plants outside...was she? He knew next to nothing about growing anything other than what he found in a petri dish. You put plants in the ground and they grew...didn’t they? Perhaps the brownish thing in the middle of the milk was a fertiliser of some kind. Maybe this was some new organic way to grow plants…

The outer door opened and Molly stepped in and quickly latched it. She was wringing her hands and muttering something to herself, but he couldn’t make it out. She closed the inner door and stood staring at the floor for a moment before she looked at him. 

“Molly, what…” he began, but she cut him off again with a shake of her head. 

“Tea,” she said and brushed past him. 

Sherlock followed her to the kitchen and stood watching as she rather too briskly went about making tea. She pulled a tin of biscuits off a shelf and fairly tossed them on the table, then poured two mugs and brought them over. Finally she sat, and sighed deeply. 

He watched her silently. Something was very wrong here, and along with his concern for her, he was frantically trying to deduce something. Anything.

_Molly has a garden I knew nothing about. She’s upset/worried/bothered about something in the garden. She didn’t want me to be in the garden. She’s not growing marijuana, I would have noticed._

Nothing. Apart from her tension/worry/upset, he could ascertain nothing else about the situation. It was about the strange little garden; that’s all he could tell. 

As much as it pained him to do so, he waited.

***** 

Molly put her hands around her mug and stared into it. What could she say? How could she explain this? She mentally scolded herself for thinking she could ever keep a secret like this from Sherlock for very long. He was bound to wander out to the garden sooner or later. Why oh why didn’t she tell him right from the beginning? 

She looked up to find Sherlock watching her intently. She closed her eyes briefly, took a deep breath. 

“Okay. Sherlock, I’m going to tell you something and I need for you to keep quiet until I’m finished and...and try to believe me. Just...promise me you’ll try as hard as you can.”

Sherlock tilted his head and studied her silently for a moment, then nodded, crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap.

“Sherlock...there are fairies in the garden.” 

Sherlock’s lips began to quirk, and he tried - with only partial success - to swallow an outright bark of laughter. He couldn’t help it. Of all the things he could imagine she would say...and then his expression froze as he remembered _what_ _felt_ _like_ _tiny_ _fingers_ _tugging_ _on_ _his_ _trouser_ _leg_... _miniature statues of creatures…_

He tried for a disbelieving, sceptical smirk, and failed. Molly was staring at him with wide, earnest eyes. She was obviously very serious, not making a joke. She truly believed what she was saying. 

Molly went on, her voice low and nearly quavering. 

“I was going to plant some flowers and herbs. It’s such a nice spot, gets lots of sun. And when I started digging, one of them...it just appeared. Came right up to me and stared at me, then took the flower out of my hand and...tossed it away. Then it took the herbs and put them in the ground all by itself. I was…” She stopped and swallowed, took a sip of tea. “I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe the sun had gotten to me and I was hallucinating. But...it was real. And Sherlock...it spoke to me. I don’t know how. But I could understand it. I mean, it wasn’t like it was speaking English or anything, but somehow I knew what it was saying to me. It told me what plants to bring, and it said that they would take care of the plants and share them with me if I would feed them and give them...things.” She stopped and shivered a little. “Some of them are nice. But some of them...I think some of them are just, I don’t know, tolerant of humans. Like they’re completely indifferent to us as long as we don’t bother them.” 

Her voice faded a bit, and a ghost of a little smile appeared. “They’re not at all like the fairies in the stories. At least these ones aren’t. They don’t look like humans, for one thing. They’re beautiful in a grotesque sort of way. And mostly they seem happy and funny. Unless...unless you upset them, then they can be a bit…”

The almost-smile faded along with her voice and she simply stared at him, chewing her bottom lip. 

Sherlock was very still. He glanced down at his hands in his lap, then raised his head and stared at nothing over Molly’s shoulder, then glanced around the kitchen, his gaze landing everywhere and on anything but Molly’s face. 

_He doesn’t believe me, she thought, and closed her eyes. I’ve made a truly colossal mistake._

Sherlock’s gaze finally came to rest on the mug of tea in front of him. He stared at it for an exceptionally long time (Molly’s second favorite mug, given to her by a friend [Meena] about four years ago, she only allows certain people to use it…)

Inside, Sherlock was dancing. He was leaping and shouting and shivering with excitement, and trying to contain an absurdly unreasonable urge to grab Molly and kiss her soundly. 

Instead he simply cleared his throat, and said, “Show me.”

Molly’s eyes popped open in surprise. “Wh...what?”

“Show me these fairies.”

“Sherlock, I can’t...I can’t just show you them! They don’t come like pets when I whistle for them! They’re...they’re…” She fluttered her hands, searching for a word.

Secret _..._ hidden _..._ fantastic _,_ hismindsupplied _. Magic._

Sherlock leaned forward across the table, his eyes glittering with an intensity that startled Molly. He took one of her hands and held it in his, tightly, as though he could convey his urgency through the touch of his skin on hers. 

“Molly. I believe you. I do. But I need you to find a way to show me.”

*****

Dinner was mostly a silent affair. 

Molly’s thoughts swirled like leaves in a fierce wind, trying to light on a plan wherein she could lure her little fairies out so that Sherlock could get a look at them. Sherlock’s mind veered back and forth between a cold, logical assessment of the entire concept of “fairies” in Molly’s garden, and nervous, shivery delight that they might possibly be real. 

Neither of them were able to eat more than a few bites of the delicious Indian food delivered from the restaurant.

Molly finally gave up on the idea of eating and sat back in her chair, staring at her plate. Sherlock did the same, wishing he had a cigarette. As if reading his thoughts, Molly stood and went to a drawer beneath the worktop. She rummaged around and dug out a pack of cigs and a lighter, and brought them to the table, pulling one out for herself before shoving the pack across to Sherlock. Sherlock knew the pack was there, of course, but he had thought Molly only kept them around for visitors who smoked (Meena, who was a virtual chimney, or her brother, who couldn’t smoke at home…) 

“When did…” Sherlock began, nodding at the pack of smokes. 

Molly shrugged, blew a nice little smoke ring that wafted upward. “Right after...after they showed up. It was tricky at first, figuring out how to deal with them...and keeping it secret.” 

“You did a good job of that,” he murmured, trying to match Molly’s smoke ring. 

Her mouth quirked in a half-smile. “I’ve learned a few things from you.”

Sherlock smiled back at her. Of course she had. Molly was a quick study, it would be silly to think she wouldn’t learn things from him, as much time as they had spent together over the years. He felt an odd swelling of pride and affection for her, mixed with something else - a sense of closeness, beyond simple familiarity or friendship. 

_We’re tied together by our shared secrets,_

She was so good at keeping secrets, something he had instinctively known about her from the beginning. It was why he’d always trusted her.

“What was in the bowl you took outside?”

“Milk. They love milk, and it was one of the things they asked for. I have to leave a bowl milk out for them every morning before I leave, or they get...testy.”

“And the dark lump in the middle…?”

Molly wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Blood pudding. They like that too.”

“Do they always appear when you go out to the garden?”

“Always, now. In the beginning it was sporadic. Sometimes they would be there, sometimes they would hide and wait until I came back in. I suppose they got used to me and decided they could trust me. Sort of like you did.” She grinned at him.

“No,” he said softly. “I trusted you immediately.”

Molly’s grin softened into a smile and she looked down. “I didn’t know that. I thought...I thought you just figured out how to use my feelings to get what you…”

Sherlock shook his head. “No. I knew at once, as soon as I met you, that I could trust you with anything. It wasn’t just getting what I wanted from you, Molly. There was genuine feeling there, on my side. I was just too wrapped up in myself to recognise or acknowledge it, let alone express it.”

The words coming out of his mouth shocked him. How did they get from fairies to feelings? He cleared his throat, looked away from her. Shocking or not, he did recognise the truth of what he’d said, and wondered at himself. 

When he looked back at her, Molly was staring at him, her lips parted, her expression saying plainly that she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. 

_Get back to the fairies._

He took a breath, plowed on. 

“Before you arrived, when I was...exploring...I thought I felt...no, I _did_ feel...something tug on the leg of my trousers.”

Molly mentally shook herself out of her astonishment at Sherlock’s uncharacteristic admission.

“They, erm...they can be sort of mischievous. And if you upset them or don’t give them what they want, they can be more than that. Once I didn’t give them something they asked for and they actually came into the house and terrorised Toby for a whole afternoon, pulling his tail and tickling his ears. They also left a big pile of dirt on the kitchen floor. I didn’t want to test them; I’m not sure they’d actually hurt anything or anyone, but I don’t know, so I make sure and give them what they want. I mean, they’re not unreasonable requests, just little things...like the milk and the blood pudding. Sometimes they ask for bits of cloth or small things from the house. Nothing very large.” She stopped and gave a short laugh. “Once they asked for a toothbrush. They called it a ‘mouth tool’. Took me a bit to figure that one out.”

“The bags in the hallway...it’s not trash at all, it’s the things they ask for...” For some reason, he was inordinately happy about this realisation. In fact, given the subject, he was enjoying this discussion enormously and he didn’t quite know why. A fleeting thought came to him, which he quickly filed away to examine later.

“So. How do we lure them out where I can see them?”

Molly frowned as she gathered up their plates and took them to the sink. 

“You said one of them pulled on your trouser leg?”

Sherlock nodded, still a bit bewildered at the ease with which he was beginning to accept the reality of Molly’s fairies.

“Maybe…” She stopped as she took her seat again. “Maybe it won’t be so difficult. I mean, if they’ve already chosen to interact with you...maybe they’ve already decided you’re okay. I mean, not a threat. Or something. It’s hard to understand their reasoning sometimes. Maybe if you just went out there with me, they’d come out.” 

Sherlock actually shivered. His outward logical, so-called rational self was at war with another part of him, and was suddenly and dramatically losing the battle.

_Because it’s magic. Because it’s part of that hidden, extraordinary, mysterious London that you’ve always known was there, invisible to ordinary people. You’ve always felt it, always known that there was something more, a whole other secret world..._

There it was again: Secrets. _Magic_. 

A curious kind of relaxation eased its way through his body as he gave in to it and finally accepted the reality of what he’d always _felt_ , always believed deep down, but had never outwardly acknowledged.

Sherlock stood and held out his hand to Molly.

“Well then. Shall we go and see?”

*****

As they made their way to the back door, Molly explained the Rules of the Garden to Sherlock. She picked up a little box from a shelf by the door in which Sherlock knew she kept random pieces of string and thread. Then she picked up a small candle in a brass holder and a book of matches and put them in her pocket.

“It’s a gift for them. They love gifts, small bits and pieces that they can make things with. You mustn’t look for them. Act as if you’re ignoring them. Admire the plants. Speak softly. If they show up, don’t stare at them, just look at them and then look away. Don’t try to touch them, and if they touch you, be very still. Remember, they’re not like animals. They’re little beings that think. Like tiny very smart slightly crazy people.” She blew out a breath and looked at him. “Ready?”

Sherlock nodded and Molly opened the door.

They stepped out into a night that was mild and still and redolent with fragrance from the plants. The brick walls of the garden muffled the sounds of the city, even blocking much of the ambient light. Molly reached into her pocket and pulled out the small candle and a pack of matches.

“They seem to like candlelight,” she whispered, and set the candle on the gravel path and sat down tailor fashion in front of it. She struck a match and lit the candle as Sherlock eased himself down beside her. He rubbed his hands on his thighs once and then grew still…and suddenly found himself struggling to keep from laughing outright.

_I’m sitting here knee to knee with my love, waiting for_ fairies _to come out and visit!_

_Wait...what?! ‘My love…’?? What...where did...?!_

Sherlock took a quick sharp breath, his mouth dropping open in consternation, just as Molly touched his hand, and out from under the leaves of a plant directly in front of them stepped the strangest creature he had ever seen.

He stared, despite Molly’s warning. He couldn’t help it. He stared and blinked and gasped as it shuffled toward him - a gait falling somewhere between a walk and a skip. It stopped directly in front of him and stared back at him with dark eyes that seemed to take up most of its face. Behind his shock and amazement, the bit of his logical brain that was left functioning began cataloguing every detail he could see in the small light of the candle.

_Approximately 40 centimetres tall. Pale green skin. Triangular face, topped by spiky white...hair? Looks like dandelion fluff. Tiny flat nose, a slit for a mouth (does it have teeth?) Spindly neck and limbs, narrow little chest with a rounded pot belly. Comparatively long fingers, five in number, long narrow feet with toes ending in what look like little claws or talons. And it’s wearing clothes. Clothes!_

The little creature was dressed in bits of mismatched patterned cloth sewn together to form a kind of tunic that reached midway down its legs. Another piece of brown cloth was tied at its shoulders to form a kind of cloak down its back that reached to the ground. It stood with its arms held out away from its body. 

Sherlock and the creature stared at each other for perhaps a full minute, until Sherlock remembered Molly’s rules and he quickly glanced away. When he looked back, the creature had lowered itself to the ground, and sat with its spindly legs crossed in imitation of the way he and Molly were sitting. 

Molly took the box of thread and string and placed it in front of her. The creature glanced at her and blinked, then tilted its head once in what Sherlock assumed was acknowledgement of the gift. 

The voice in his head was the sound of a miniscule violin, if the instrument could form words instead of notes - high and thin and lilting. 

“ _We know you,”_ it said, and Sherlock swayed in his sitting posture, dizzy with wonderment.

His own voice was a mere breath. 

“You know me?”

The creature - the _fairy -_ lifted it tiny hand and flicked its long fingers at him, which Sherlock intuitively understood was its version of a nod. 

“ _We see you day and night, you walk, seek, ask. We see you.”_

Everything inside Sherlock went still, and he closed his eyes, trying to breathe. When he opened them again, the little creature was gone. He scanned the garden, stared intently into the plants in front of him, but could detect no movement. 

Molly was gripping his hand and staring at him, chewing her lower lip. He was filled with a deep, peculiar sense of loss and wanted desperately to simply lower his head to Molly’s lap and cry.

*****

It took a good while sitting in the - comparative - normality of Molly’s lounge before he could think again. Molly left him alone and quietly went about fixing tea in the kitchen. He sat on the sofa, eyes closed, hands steepled in front of his face, replaying the incident over and over, checking every detail. 

The battle between the logical order of our everyday lives and the experience of extraordinary events can drive some people to insanity, even when those people claim to believe in the existence of alternate realities. Sherlock had seen it before: People suddenly thrust into events that conflicted with or negated their ordinary perceptions of reality, confronted with the “impossible”, can react in extremes, with acceptance or denial, either re-examining and re-ordering their belief systems or simply refusing to incorporate their experience. _Half of what we think we see isn’t there, and half of what is really there we don’t see._ Who had said that? He waved it away to be examined later.

He was used to seeing what others didn’t, detecting patterns that ordinary people could not see. It’s what allowed him to do what he did and be what he was. But this…

_You’ve always believed, always known there was something...more. Something else, behind, underlying our ordinary existence and experience. Something that exists alongside us, sharing our reality but quietly, secretly, hidden. Secrets. Magic. But until now, you’ve never had reason to acknowledge it - nor interact with it!_

And then there was that other little thought, that he had filed away to be examined later. A tiny idea that boded huge revelations and - possibly - large changes in his life. 

_Something is opening in me; something here is pulling hidden thoughts...feelings...out into the open…_

The sudden impulse to have dinner with Molly (she most certainly thought it was because he wanted something, but he didn’t; it was just an impulse…), that feeling of fondness, closeness, _intimacy_ when was thinking about how quick she was, the nearly overwhelming urge to kiss her, “ _sitting_ _here_ _with_ _my_ _love…_ ” Was all this new? Or was it there all along, hidden, silent, unacknowledged…

He opened his eyes as Molly entered the room with two mugs of tea and quietly set one in front of him. She curled up in her chair with her mug and peeked at him over the top of it as she took a sip.

He couldn’t imagine life without her. When did this happen? How long had it been this way?

There was no answer for those questions and at the moment he had no inclination to examine them. This was simply the way it was. 

Molly was still silent, knowing Sherlock would speak when he was ready. No doubt he was still installing her little fairies in their own neat little rooms in his mind palace, where she was sure they would be very comfortable, even though his eyes were open and he was looking at her steadily, his hands folded in his lap, and...wait...was that a smile…? Yes, he was most definitely smiling at her…

She cleared her throat and risked it.

“Are you okay?” 

Sherlock glanced down and then back at her, his smile broadening. 

“Molly...have you noticed any other changes since they appeared? Changes in you perhaps?” 

She took a breath and looked away with a slight frown, an expression he found completely endearing and which made him, irrationally, want to giggle a little.

“Actually…” she began, and then stopped as she uncurled from her chair and came to sit beside him. She didn’t look at him, but stared into her mug. “Actually, I think I’ve gotten a bit more...impatient with people lately. More abrupt. Like when Henry misfiled the Oglander reports last Wednesday. Ordinarily I would have just redone them myself and let it go, but...for some reason I tracked him down in the lab and made him go back and refile them and then I yelled at him. I called him a nose hair.” She actually blushed at this, and then snorted. “He avoided me for the rest of the week.”

Sherlock laughed. “Really, Molly. Nose hair? That’s the best you could do?”

“Mike was there, I didn’t want to say arsehole or fuckwit.”

It took them five minutes to stop giggling. 

***** 

“Molly, could you hear what he...she... _it..._ said to me?”

Molly nodded. She and Sherlock were both slouched shoulder-to-shoulder on the sofa, their feet up on the coffee table. “It said that they knew you. They “saw” you. What did it mean?”

“I think...I think it means that they’re not only in your garden. I think they’re everywhere, all over the city. Hidden. I think they watch us all the time.” 

Molly nodded again. “That makes sense. They could be anywhere. But...it seemed more, I don’t know, _personal_ than that. I don’t think it meant you as in ‘you people’ but you as in ‘you Sherlock.’ Maybe they’re interested in you especially.” 

Sherlock thought about this. “Possibly. Though I don’t know why they should be.”

Molly sat up and looked at him. 

“Because you’re different, Sherlock. You’re not like the rest of us, you’re so much...more than ordinary people. Surely they sense that and it would make you worth keeping an eye on.”

Unaccountably, Sherlock felt slightly embarrassed. He stood abruptly, then held out his hand to Molly. 

“I’m starving. Let’s finish dinner.”

Molly grinned at Sherlock, then took his hand and stood, smiling up at him. 

Something had changed between them. She didn’t know for sure what it was, but something was _different_. Sherlock was still holding her hand, gazing down at her with a slight smile...and then before she could say a word, he bent his head and kissed her, brushing his lips over hers softly, quickly. Her breath caught and she blinked in surprise, her heart beginning to pound. Sherlock raised his other hand and cupped her cheek, sliding his thumb across her cheekbone. 

“Shall we?” he asked, and she didn’t know if he meant finishing dinner or...something else. When he pulled her along toward the kitchen, she decided _dinner_ , _definitely_ _dinner_ , but happily, the promise of ‘something else’ hung in the air like incense, like the fragrance of flowers. 

She knew in her heart that, somehow, the fairies had more than a little to do with it. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was the original story I wanted to do for Kiki's tribute. Somehow it went off the rails and had to be redone, but it finally came together (somewhat) and so...here it is. Something in me is saying that this may not be the only story set in this particular universe.


End file.
